Article Analysis and Synthesis

7 July 2018

The article discusses means for Organization Development Practitioners (ODD) to build stronger links between their work and academic theory. In this paper, analyze the article based on the six questions listed below and will attempt to synthesize the article. Were the author’s interpretations and conclusions supported by the evidence he or she presented? Was there any apparent bias? Were there other ways that specific data could be interpreted other than how the author approached it? Were there any important variables that were left out of the study? Was every assertion supported by fact? Did the text use reliable resources? This is a well organized article that has combined a clear progression of ideas and paragraphing with a reasonable number of substitute points of view.

In this section, I will provide answers to the questions listed above. There was an enormous amount of references provided to back up interpretations and conclusions.

The references were well outlined as well. There was an apparent bias in the article in favor of Academics and theory because not much was presented to back the point of view of the restrictions except few mentions here and there.The author focused more on narrating the past and present theories and pointing out what needed to be done by the ODD scholar-practitioners. Quite a bit of evidence was presented to back the Academics. The data contained under the sub title ‘organization development contribution’ could have been interpreted in favor of ODD scholar-practitioners.

The contributions of the ODD scholar-practitioners were down played by the author especially in the conclusion. Barterer’s comments raised other issues that suggest further research opportunities.Barterer in her introduction pointed that, ‘there is very little academic writing that emphasizes how practice should inform theory’ Barterer (2008). The evidence provided in the article was more of survey type as it had no experimental or control study. There was also no mention of any limitations to the study. The paragraphs and assertions were well examples- supported. The author used reliable resources in the development of the article as it is evidenced in the references provided.

The resources used were mostly peer-reviewed articles and journals written by Academics.